When Steam was hacked way back in November, Valve took the high road and immediately informed users of the breach. (Not that the company had much choice -- the hackers defaced the Steam forums as part of their nefarious deeds.) The baddies snuck into an encrypted database full of sensitive user info -- including credit card numbers -- but Valve found no evidence that any of the data was stolen or cracked. That's the good news. Now the bad news: the breach is probably worse than originally thought and the hackers may still have your credit card information.

We continue our investigation of last year's intrusion with the help of outside security experts. In my last note about this, I described how intruders had accessed our Steam database but we found no evidence that the intruders took information from that database. That is still the case.

Recently we learned that it is probable that the intruders obtained a copy of a backup file with information about Steam transactions between 2004 and 2008. This backup file contained user names, email addresses, encrypted billing addresses and encrypted credit card information. It did not include Steam passwords.

We do not have any evidence that the encrypted credit card numbers or billing addresses have been compromised. However as I said in November it's a good idea to watch your credit card activity and statements. And of course keeping Steam Guard on is a good idea as well.

We are still investigating and working with law enforcement authorities. Some state laws require a more formal notice of this incident so some of you will get that notice, but we wanted to update everyone with this new information now.